


Thunder Chasing Rain

by Rainchild98



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Enclave Presence (Past), English as a second language, F/M, Human Experimentation, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Minor Character Death, Non-Canon Tribe/Tribal Culture, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn Cause that's How Relationships Work, The Courier is a Melee Goddess, Tribal Courier
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-13
Updated: 2019-03-25
Packaged: 2019-05-21 20:47:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 12,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14922566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainchild98/pseuds/Rainchild98
Summary: Bare footed and singing, she walks through the desert, heavy with scars no nanin can read.Barely living, waiting to die, he watches the skyline through countless nights that blend together, weighed down with memories and regrets.





	1. Greeting the Night

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own Fallout New Vegas or any of its characters or content, nor do I intend to profit from this fanfic.
> 
> I have annoying editing habits, please spare me your wrath.
> 
> A Tribal Courier I built around my favorite play-through of Fallout New Vegas. I'll update it whenever I get the chance.

     Manny pulled back from his scope and rubbed his eyes. 

     He had to be seeing things. Walking through the evening heat, down the road to Novac, was the most Tribal person he had ever seen. And that was saying something. He put his eye back to his scope. She, for it was unmistakably a woman, was still about a mile off, and walking slow, her hips swinging in a lolling rhythm with the strange thing she had strung over her shoulders.  A stick with a pack of sorts hanging off each end, it looked like. She wore an odd thick poncho that looked too short, no shoes, and dark marks......indistinguishable from this distance, covered her skin. 

     Manny was so engrossed in watching the stranger through his scope that he jumped and fell out of his chair when a hand landed on his shoulder.

     "Shit Boone, you scared me!" Manny sucked in a breath as he stood, dusting himself off and retrieving his weapon from the floor. He glanced down the road, the woman little more than a human shaped dot without the aid of a scope. " There's a strange woman, coming in alone. Looks like she's a Tribal." Jerking his thumb at the dot before heading through the door, letting it shut hard behind him. 


	2. The Night Sky

     A smile curved onto thick lips, the wicked teeth they normally hid showing through. A long days walk had brought her here. Novac, this little nowhere town she had never been to, yet unmissable, the panishu dinosaur creature sticking out like a sore thumb in the desert. A ways off her sharp eyes had spotted the glint of a gun barrel set in among the row of teeth in the fading light. At the foot of it she stopped, outside the fence still. She let her head drop back as she looked up at the thing.   

     Her pack settled in a dust as she reached for the top of the fence. She hauled herself up with a graceful ease and planted her feet sideways on the top of the fence. She smoothed her hand over the texture of the dinosaur's side, and found the worn texture rough enough. She stepped up onto into, her feet turning up, awkwardly flat, and cupping the curves. She grinned again and clambered up the side of the dinosaur like a sticky-footed gecko. She pulled herself up onto its almost flat snoot and sighed up at the stars glaring down through the cloudless night sky. 

     The rapidly cooling night didn't bother her as she star gazed. The stars here read differently in the summer than they did back in the brush covered hills she called home, but they where no less beautiful. She did not know how long she sat there, monomi tucked up in her knees, staring at the night. 

     When she stirred, she crawled over to the edge of the dinosaurs head and peeped over. Between the teeth she could see a man, sitting tense and straight backed in a chair, the rifle she saw before nested into one thick shoulder. She moved around the edge a bit, and twisted down into the creatures jaws, softly landing besides the sitting man.  

 

     


	3. Rain-Walking-Softly

     Manny was so rarely distracted, so no matter his feelings for the man, for the sake of the town, Boone watched the 'strange Tribal' walk into town, never truly looking at her, ignoring her once she disappeared from his field of vision as she got closer.

     A gentle creak in the roof and the softest of rustling, echoed by a series of strange tiny clicks, was all the warning he had that he wasn't alone. He was up out of the chair, backed into the other corner of Dinky's mouth, gun leveled between him and the sudden invasion so fast he didn't get a good look at who had managed to creep so close. The person stood still where they had landed and he blinked through his sun glasses at the person before him.

  
     The silence stretched as he took in the woman standing there, arms crossed loosely. Her bare feet sported thick black toenails, her tanned olive skin covered in layers of black designs, wearing what could only be described as a loin-cloth, and a heavy ......... collar, he decided after looking at it more closely, that fell to her elbows. Her hair was a rich brown, long, cast heavy to one side and tied strange and thick. Bulky earrings hung to her shoulders, and her eyes, watching him just as he watched her, seemed to glow purple in the dark, pupils bent and misshapen somehow.

  
     She smiled an easy smile, one that showed no teeth. Her right hand slipped from her folded arms and hung in the space between them, under his rifle still aimed between her eyes, palm up, her pinky and ring finger curled in. Her too long fingernails where the same dull black as her toenails. 

     "I didna mean to startle you." Her bur was thick, her speech a lazy thick drawl, he'd never heard anything like it.

     "You shouldn't sneak up on people you don't want to startle." She made a snuffed sound that might have been amused.

     "I na doin no thing to you. I just curious." Her fingers flipped up towards the roof for a moment. "I's just reading stars." She pressed her hand towards him again, fingers folded over her open palm, just like they had been before. "I called Rain-Walking-Softly. You is?"

     He looked at her for a few moments longer before he lowered his gun, then slung it over his shoulder. He moved to shake her hand. "Boone." He jumped a bit when she grabbed not his hand, but his elbow, dragging her hand down his forearm before settling it in his grip.

     "Boone." She tested the name, pulling her hand away and pushing it back into her other still folded arm. Her bur was so thick that it almost sounded like she was cooing his name. She eyed him over head to toe. "You is...." her brow creased, then flattened "Watcher man?" 

     He raised a brow, a little unsure of what she was trying to ask. "Your not from around here are you?"


	4. A Broken Lock

 

     She made an amused noise at him, and popped her collar, making all the flat carved beads in it click at him and spread her arms.

    "I think this easy to see." This man, Boone, she made him uncomfortable, but this was nothing new. He just stared at her through his sunglasses, just as he had when she startled him. 

    "My wife was taken from here, at night, while I was on duty. The bastards knew when to come and the only took Carla. I want the son of a bitch who sold her out." Sweet arms of The Holding One. These nanin 'Wives' where important to their 'Husbands'. Something like amari. One always to be returned to. And someone had taken his. 

    "You want find wife?" She saw him shift, if only a little. The smell of anger in the air twinged with the smell of guilt. Guilt. Interesting.

    "Carlas's dead. No one knows I know that. It should stay that way. I just want the person who sold her." Boone growled back. She made another amused noise at him. He was a very broody man. "Here." He pulled the red cap off his head and held it out for her to take. "Take my beret. When you figure out who did this, bring them out in front of the dinosaur when I'm on duty. Put on my beret and I'll know its them."

    What an interesting man. Perhaps this little nowhere town could amuse her for a moment. She nodded to herself, she would let herself be distracted from cracking open the skull of the man in the checkered suit to help this one. She reached for the hat, and closed the space between them. He was taller than her, muscled body broader, but she stopped with his nose a breath from hers, hand still on the hat she hadn't pulled away from him. "Why trusting me?" She held his eyes.

    "Because I know you couldn't have done it. Your not from here." He said, quieter than the anger he had blustered with earlier.

    "Is good." She moved back, taking the hat with her. Then stepped over to the side of the dinosaurs mouth, and spying her pack below, undisturbed where she had left it, she slipped between teeth and jumped out of the creature. She landed like a veno, legs spread wide, with ease, straightened herself, grabbed her pack, and walked back out a ways from the town.

    She hummed broken bits of her people's songs as she pulled her cozy mimi from her pack, before unlooping her packs and unwinding the wrapping from her stilts and pegs. It took her a few moments to stand up her mimi and peg it down, down with ease that only years of doing this could bring. She crawled inside, dragging in her packs, pulled from them her furs, and settled them down, before pulling her collar up over her head, laying it down and curling into her furs in sleep.

    With the already blistering rays of desert morning, she was up, mimi packed away, breakfast eaten, bitmol drunk and prayers said. She slung her pack up over her shoulders and let her hips swing her into the town in the daylight. The smell of old wood and mold greeted her. True to her word, she spoke to all the people that lived in the town about Carla, Boone's 'wife'. A rotten wife if these people knew anything. Still, a crazy man whose name did not stay with her told her of shadow men. Shadows worth chasing. She bid her time, sitting in peaceful meditation for most of the day. The woman called Jeannie May left her office, locking it behind her, as true dusk fell, and she watched a funny man slip out of the dinosaur moments after Boone walked into it again. When all was still and quiet, she finally moved.

    Stretching with lazy grace, she rose and walked over to the door of the office. The wood was old, and no match for her unnatural strength when she pressed at the door, breaking it around the lock as she shoved inwards. She slipped past, closing the door behind her. Around the counter and stuck in the floor was a safe. A shuffle through of the counter papers brought nothing. She cast her eyes on the safe. She sighed, hoping the sound of cracking the thing open wouldn't bring with it any unwanted attention. Placing one palm flat, but free of the door, she held down the thing, so it would not come out of the floor, then found the seam of the door with her other hand and let her fingers sink into the metal with a whine. The locking mechanism popped, then cracked as she pulled the safe apart. Of all the things her father had done, this strength of hers, she would always thank him for.

    Inside the safe was a pile of caps, and a single page. She reached for the paper and slipped it out, eyes reading through the page with an ease that her tongue lacked when it came to English. Legion. Legion slavers and a pregnant woman sold. She hissed through her teeth. Jeanie May, little mechia woman.

    She left the safe there, looking like a smushed piece of fruit, and slipped out the door, tucking her grim finding into her binder. Following her nose, she knocked hard on the door of a musty home, and a groggy Jeannie May answered the door in her night dress.

   "Oh hello dear. What can I do for you at this late hour?"

   "Find thing, want word. You come?" Pouring on the bur, she gestured behind her to the space near the dinosaur.

   "Of course dear. Just let me put on my slippers." Jeannie May disappeared from the crack in the door, only to reappear a moment later with slipper clad feet. Rain took her hand and pulled her along.

    "Here, this way."

    The stupid woman followed her, without trying to pry her arm away, to the front of the dinosaur. In a blink, Rain was away from the vile woman, Boones hat landing sloppily on her head. She clapped her hands over her ears as the shot she knew was coming rang out. Still the awful exploding sound caught painfully in her ears and bounced around inside her skull for a moment too long. Rubbing her poor ears, she looked down at Jeanie Mays headless corpse.  She gave it a good kick, loving the sound of crunching bone as it chased the gunshot from her ears.

    She turned then, and walked back for the gate, and up the stairs of the dinosaur. She ducked in, hating the sour smell that came with too many panishu places. Boone opened the door at the top of the stairs as she reached for it.

    "How did you know?" His voice low. He smelled of fury.

    "She have bad locks." She told him as she pulled the paper from her binder and held it out for him. He took it, read it, and tore it into to tiny little pieces. "Boone." his head snapped up. "Where now you do?" He stared at her for a moment, as if processing what she had said.

   "I can't stay here. Maybe I'll go hunting Legion."

    "You come walking with Rain-Walks-Softly?" The poor man should not be left to wander alone. She was not stupid. She knew that rifle might end up in his mouth. And some company would be a very welcome change to her travel. He looked at her again, staring long and hard through those sunglasses.

    "Why should I?"

    "I be bad speaking English. Boone speaking good English. Boone is nanin......ah....not tribe. Be very good. Also not be alone." She grinned then, full toothed and jagged, in a manner she knew made those who did not know her sweat. "We go hunting Legion, kill much more together." He startled at her teeth. Then stared at her some more.

    "Fine." His shoulders caved. "Come for me in the morning, when my shift is over."

 

 

 


	5. Swinging Rhythm

     Boone rubbed his eyes under his glasses. They where heavy from the lack of sleep. But some part within him felt lighter now that Jeannie May, the bitch, lay headless and cold in front of the dinosaur. It was almost dawn. He looked down once again at the strange tent that looked like a worm that Rain-Walking-Softly had set up again a ways out from town. Perhaps a little further this time, because of the bitches corpse. What a strange woman. Her bloodthirsty smile made with glinting sharp teeth kept flashing in his mind. He couldn't help but wonder if his sleep addled brain had created those teeth. But the look in her eyes, it had said she knew exactly how terrifying her mouth full of knives looked. 

      Part of him wanted to care. Part of him wanted to be cautious. A different part of him had told her to find him when he got off shift. The sun kept climbing in the sky. He watched her crawl out of her tent and start her morning again. Manny had picked up a terrible habit of sleeping in and she was early to rise. He watched as she lit a fire and started cooking something. What he wasn't sure. She took a shot of something green from a bottle. Then she folded, face pressed to her knees. Somehow, without that shawl of beads, her shoulders seemed wider, bigger. And she stayed folded like that, until the sun had breached the horizon. By the time Manny cracked the door to the snipers nest, her tent was packed away and she had disappeared from view beneath the nose of the dinosaur.

     She was leaned against the side of the dinosaur tail, her strange yoked bags in the dust at her feet. 

     "I have to pack." He muttered as he walked by. "Go scare the shit out of Manny for a minute." He gestured vaguely at Dinky as he walked.

     He went to his door, unlocked it, and grabbed the duffel bag from under the bed. A bedroll already in it, he threw in a spare set of clothes, all the ammo he owned, his canteen, several bottles of water, then emptied a shelf of canned food into it. Satisfied, he walked out the door with his bag on one shoulder and his rifle on the other. Just in time to watch that crazy woman swing down from the dinosaurs head, into its mouth. Manny screamed. Like a bitch. He noted it away in the back of his head that if she could climb up that blasted dinosaur, she could probably climb up just about anything. 

     Unlike when she dropped in on him, she climbed back out over then head of the dinosaur a few moments later and scampered down the tail. She hopped off the end, her collar making that distinct clicking noise. She landed with a flourishing bow she swept mockingly in his direction. 

     "Ready go walking?" She always seemed to purr with the thick bur in the slow way she spoke English. He nodded. She bent and grabbed the yoke of her strange pack and strung it over her shoulders with a simple well practiced ease.

     Her hips swung in time with the swinging packs as she walked from Novac. He followed her, few steps back. She seemed to walk slowly, to meander along with all the hurry of a sleepy brahmin. Yet somehow she managed a pace that saw his legs, grow a bit unused in the snipers nest in Novac, burning by the time they reached Boulder City. They had made it as the evening had begun to fall. Walked the way in pleasant silence, broken by bits of her humming, or singing softly, phrases in another language that he could not begin to understand, but found nice all the same. As she walked, her collar clicking in a way that had started out annoying, but turned into a lulling, familiar sound. 

     He stood back as she strutted in, that collar clicking in its now comforting little way, brushing past the NCR man posted outside , one Lieutenant Monroe, like he wasn't there. It seemed to take forever, but out came the soldiers that had been trapped. And before he had walked all the way over, the poor NCR man had been talked down, and the soldiers stood by as a clutch of Great Khans slipped out the gate and fled, vaporizing into the desert night. 

     "Boone." She purred at him, as she walked to where he had stopped, holding her hand out to him, showing him the thing in her palm. "We camp here, head walking to Strip in sunrise." It was a thick lighter, engraved, clean, and free of scratches for the most part.  

     "Alright." 


	6. Campfire Stars

     She picked a good camping spot, set in the rubble of a panishu building that smelled faintly of fire. There it was flat, a still standing wall blocked the wind. She was quick in her work, mimi stood and pegged in practiced quickness. She watched in amusement as Boone set out his roll on the far side of the campfire she built, pushing rubble into a good fire ring. Her mimi, she knew well, was plenty big for a family, if she had one. But the nanin where a funny people, that touched too little too less, and did not sleep together without pieces of paper and ceremony that tied them to each other. She shook her head, snuffing, as she cracked her starting knife into her flint, lighting the tepee of debris she had built in her thoughts. She knew where the social boundaries in most nanin lay, but she would not pretend to understand them. She glanced at Boone, frowning as she found the man holding a can of panishu garbage food, wiping a pocket knife furiously on his pant leg. 

     He startled when she got up from her fire and snatched the can away from him. His brows creased over top his sun glasses, asking the question before it left his lips. So, before he could speak it, she answered it for him.

     "This," She waved the can at him, "Panishu food. Is bad eating. You dona eating this unless no other foods." The crease in his brow lightened, but remained, and the smell of annoyance met her nose. She snuffed at him. "Dona worry. I cooking good foods." She set the can down on his knee and went back to her fire. With careful fingers, she tapped at the tops of the debris that surrounded her burning handiwork. Hot enough, she decided. From her pack, she produced her nochu, and slipped from it good pieces of a gecko she had hunted the day before she met Boone. She chased the meat with dried crumbled spicing and salt, before retrieving the roasters she always carried and planting them on the ground inside her fire ring. She mounted the meat there, then looked up to meet Boone's eyes, for they had been watching her the whole time. 

     She snuffed at him again, thoroughly amused. The man was too good at staring silently through those glasses. "Boone." She liked the way his name sounded when she spoke it. She could roll it, without distorting the word, like too much of her English suffered. Hearing his name seemed to snap him out of his broody stare. 

     "What?"

     "Want talking? " 

     "No." Silence stretched then, save the fire and the sizzling gecko. "Where are we going?" She was a bit surprised he had spoken again.

     "To New Vegas." 

     "Why?"

     "Hunting man. He gave bullets. I return." She smiled all teeth, thinking about splitting the checkered mans head. 

     That made him silent. And he did not speak again. Not when she pulled steaming meat from her fires and handed him slightly too hot pieces. Not when she finished her own and packed away her cooking tools. Not when she folded herself in her evening prayers and drank her bitmol. And nothing still when she slipped away from their camping place to find the warmth of some soldier that needed softness she could only pretend to give.

     He was still but not sleeping, back to the dying fire, in his strange nanin furs when she brought that soldier back softly. Not rising, not caring or just not speaking to the intrusion in their camp. She took that soldier, laid him in her furs to warm them. 

     Later she wondered as she drifted away into sleep, comfortable with a body sleeping beside her, if she had upset Boone in some way. She did not know him yet, had not walked with him long enough to know his nature well enough. Her last fading thoughts hoped he would still be by the fire ring when the morning came. 

 


	7. Meeting the Monster

     Boone woke to with a bitter smell in his nose. It startled him and he sat bolt upright, arms tangled in his bedroll. It took him a moment, to remember where he was, and a moment longer to realize that he wasn't in any kind of danger. By the time he had fumbled his sunglasses onto his face, the terrible smell had faded. Still half in his sleeping bag, rubbing his eyes under his glasses with one hand, he looked at the woman by the fire, sprung to life again. She was without her big collar, bent, face buried between the knees of her folded legs. Her arms were stretched forward in front of her, dark nailed fingers flat and stretching towards the fire. Eyes closed.

     Without the collar, and much closer than the last time he had seen her do this, he could see the map of dark markings on her bare back, obscured now only by a strap of cloth that kept her modesty. They where like nothing he had every seen before. Too thick and raised to be a tattoos, he thought them scars, but done with such detail, such carefulness, that even he could tell that they had been made by practiced hands. He could see that even without the collar there, she still wore one of sorts. A collar pattern circled the base of her neck, disappeared around the front of it. A beautiful flower design, complex and soft, hemmed in by a circle of symbols graced the back of her right shoulder. The circle was mirrored onto the back of her left shoulder, the symbols different. He didn't know what they held inside them was. Somewhere in the back of his memory something tugged at the not quite familiar design, but he let it go. Opting instead to let his eyes follow the rest of the complex weaving of symbols down her back. They tapered out around the small of her back. Other than the flower on her shoulder, nothing else was something that he recognized. 

     He was startled a bit when she moved, sitting up and pulling her legs into a lazy criss-cross. He realized he had been staring at her for a while then, and her lips curved into a smile that hid those wicked teeth of hers. 

     "Greeting morning, Boone." She purred at him. She swept a hand in front of her. " I pray, in sunrise and sunset. Is good in my heart." She tapped her chest, and he noticed that while the rest of the collar made of marks wrapped around the front of her neck, the expanse of collar bone and chest was almost free of markings. Almost. A circular something was distorted in mash of her cleavage. He wondered what it was. He looked at her more and saw that there where no markings anywhere on her stomach. It seemed curious when most of the rest of her seemed so heavy with those marks. She made that snuffing sound again, which he was sure was some kind of amused sound.

     "Ya wake slow?" He shook his head and kicked out of his sleeping bag. Feeling slightly bothered that he had stared at her so much, yet at the same time wanting to examine the markings she bore further. He just grunted. By the time he had his bedroll packed back into his duffle bag, she had breakfast cooking away. He didn't know what plant it was but when she handed it to him it was sweet and warm. He had forgotten about her bringing someone back last night until the moment the man crawled out of her tent. 

     The soldier she had picked for her company was groggy and shirtless, neck covered in dark bruises, as he sat and pulled on his socks and boots. Then he saw Boone. His eyes went wide and his face red and his fingers froze in his boot laces.

     "I  uh I she said......" Boone just stared at him. What the poor guy must be thinking, tumbling out of bed to find a First Recon Sniper having breakfast with the woman he had spent the night with. She turned then, hand extended and full of cooked plant. 

     "Ya eating here, is good." The soldier looked at her like she'd grown an extra head in the space of time since he had crawled out of the tent. 

     "Ah.....sure." Leaving his bootlaces forgotten he took the stuff from her and scooted closer to her and the fire, seeming to relax.  Boone didn't know what to make of it all, watching the soldier eat, his neck covered in love bites, her rubbing small circles in his back, covered in angry red scratches he noticed, as she leaned close to him, eating herself. He supposed most people would be more disturbed by this, but he just didn't care enough. He just hoped she wasn't going to talk the solider into following her as well. He didn't know if he could deal with more than one person at a time right now.

     His worries where unfounded, because after the soldier had eaten and found the rest of his clothes, not without Boone noticing again the long scratches down his back, he was ushered softly away. When the soldier had gone, she began to pack, taking down her tent with an incredible speed that had Boone handing her a silent respect. Her collar on, dust kicked into the fire until it was dead, and packs strapped back together on the ends of that funny yoke she carried. She swiveled her head one last time around the space, deemed whatever she was thinking of done, and began to walk, humming to herself all the while. 

     They had walked out of Boulder City, a bit past the lattice of old world roads that lead back to the main highway when a securitron rolled up and barked a friendly greeting at her. He could have sworn he saw her ears move, he blinked, and then her ears where pinned back against her head. Like an angry dog. 

     "Well howdy there little lady."

     "Victor. What doing here?" She crossed her arms, yoke still on her shoulders.

     "Well I'm headed to New Vegas."

     "I walking there too. Ya walk with?" Her tone said her messy English was no more than words.

     "Naw, as much as I would like to, I need to use all my strength to get to New Vegas. Wouldn't wanna get caught up in any more of your gunfights now. You have a good trip now ya hear." The cowboy voiced machine began rolling away, calling "So long." over it's shoulder as it moved away. Once it had disappeared from sight, she sighed heavily and brought both hands up to gently rub at her ears. 

      "That follow me too long. Was in Goodsprings. Now is here. I dona like it." She glared at the spot where it had last been seen. Boone grunted at her. He had been to the strip a few times and he had never seen a securitron that didn't boast the standard police officer face. That in itself was suspicious enough for Boone. He decided that if they ran into the thing again, he'd shoot first and ask questions later.

     They started walking again. It wasn't long before she stopped rubbing at her ears and the slow swaying from the day before returned to her steps. Her lazy, yet somehow brutal pace had them through the 188 Trading Post before noon. They didn't stop, she just waved as they passed right through. It was mid afternoon before she stopped, set her pack down in the shade cast by a broken old world overpass to pull a water bladder from her bags and take one long drink. He hated to admit it, but she made him feel out of shape. 

     "Boone." She said it so softly that he knew something was up. "You want hunt Legion?" She tucked her pack up against that collapsed overpass and pointed ahead, off to the left. "They wait. Can smell sweat in sun." She could....smell them? He set his own pack down, the thought of exploding some Legion heads was enough to make him stop thinking about the sweat pouring down his own back, the ridiculous pace that had his feet aching, and baking afternoon sun. She watched him. Then flipped her fingers up. He followed the motion with his eyes and understood then why they had stopped here. The broken old world construct was they tallest thing anywhere near them. If he climbed up and found cover, he would have an excellent shot at anything coming towards them on the road. She knit her fingers together and tossed her head upwards. Rifle snug on his shoulder, he stepped into the aid she offered and was startled when she lifted him up even higher with a surprising amount of strength. He caught the crumpling edge of the overhang and pulled himself up with ease. 

     He shuffled through the debris on his knees and found a good spot to set up. He put this eye to his scope and sure enough, lying in wait down the road was a cluster of Legion red. Six men, if there weren't more hiding somewhere else, one with the unmistakable flag mounted on his back that marked him as an assassin. He watched through his scope as she loped down the broken road towards the group. Damn if the woman didn't move fast. They left their cover at her approach and he shot one down with ease.

     And then he froze, watching through his scope the carnage that unfolded on the other side of it. She went in unarmed, caught the second man through the stomach with a batting motion that reminded him of a death claw, red blooming out as the man fell around his torn stomach, screaming in agony. The third and fourth came at her together, she caught one helmeted head in each hand and then their heads disappeared into a red mist and screeching metal as she brought her hands together, the bodies falling near headless, spraying blood. The fifth kept his distance. Or tried to. She was on him in a flash, not caring at the spray of bullets. Boone felt his stomach twist as he watched through his scope, watched her fingers sink through armor and flesh like nothing, watched as she tore apart the mans chest as easily as one tore the wrapper off a fancy lad cake. The sixth tried to run, stumbled, fell, dropped him weapon, and Boone could tell he was pleading as she stalked towards him, covered in blood. Boone snapped out of his stupor, unloaded a round into the poor bastards head before she could pounce on him. He swung the barrel of his rifle, saw the second man was still alive, trying to stand up and hold his guts inside himself. He shot that bastard too, put him out of his misery.

     For a moment, he considered putting a round through her head too. What a god dammed monster. But she looked up in his direction, caught his eye through his scope, somehow, and smiled, those nasty teeth set in the frame of her thick lips. She was covered from head to toe in blood. Boone felt a cold fear creep into him. Nothing, not even seeing Carla on that auction block, had twisted such cold fear in him like this. 

     


	8. Alone Again

     Blood humming happily in her veins, she felt so good. It was twisted she knew, to thrive in the death of another. She did not care, for this part of herself, she knew she could not stamp out dead into the dust. The fear and the blood smelled thick in her noise and she could feel the blood dripping from her skin. She ran her tongue over her teeth and tasted nothing, and for that she was glad. There was little that tasted more vile than human blood. 

     She had been waiting for this, for the mighty Bull to kick and snort in the sand when it found a loyal dog slaughtered. Vulpes that dog had called itself. She'd treated him to some of the fire he brought to the shell of the nanin town she'd walked through, before she'd ripped him to pieces. She smelled the town long before she'd got there. Panishu trash and burning flesh had carried well on the wind. The hounds with him had turned and fled at her approach. Smart creatures. When she walked away from that town, not a cross stood, and as Vulpes had said there was no one left to tell of its story but her.

     The fight ended too fast. The painful noise of Boone's rifle rattling in her ears even after he fired his last shot. A mercy kill. She'd ripped open the poor stupid mans stomach. The blood felt sticky and she kicked into motion, walking back to where she had set her pack, stopping, crouching to rub the blood of the palms of her hands in the dust before she reached for her pack and brought back out the water she had tucked away before. She moved away from her pack again and rubbed water over her hands, her arms, picking fleshy bits from under her claws, letting watery red drops fall into crumbling panishu road. Hands cleaned, she patted first at her hair, making a happy little gruggle in the back of her throat when she found her hair free of gooey pieces. 

     She patted along her stomach, hissing a little when her fingers found where she had been shot. Three, no four, four angry little bruises bloomed across her stomach. There was another on her right thigh and another still on on her upper right arm. She hated getting shot. The bruises most bullets left behind healed quick enough, but they still hurt. 

     Her hands roamed over herself, inspecting for damage, washing away the blood. She was glad to find that no damage had come to her collar. What would she take from these ones? She had smashed a few heads which was....perhaps not the best way the collect flat bone. Maybe she would take some armor. 

     A scuffle of boots on crumbling panishu structure and the thick smell of fear and unease told her Boone had come down from his perch. She didn't look at him, kept on her trek around herself with her fingers. 

     "What the hell was that?" His voice was tight. Poor nanin man, she really didn't blame him for his fast beating heart.

     She turned to look at him then, smiling full toothed and wicked. "Hunting Legion." He flinched. She sighed deeply, suddenly tired of it all. Digging back into her bag she found the cruel little file she keep there and set to work at cleaning up her claws. She rarely came out of a fight without some damage to at least one of them. Boone hadn't run off yet, hadn't shot at her yet, was still standing there unsure of what to do next. She looked up at him. He stared back, through his sunglasses, as always.

     "We make camp this night. Then.....then I tell story of me." If he didn't believe her, then who would believe him? If he left, then she would simply be walking down the road towards that little man in the checkered suit alone again. 

 

     

 


	9. Whiskey

     Boone didn't sling his gun over his shoulder again for the rest of the day.

     Once she had cleaned enough blood off herself she packed away her things. Her yoked packs where back on her shoulders, and that lazy swinging pace of hers saw them off again. They stopped at the Grub and Gulp. She had a man named Fitz hanging off her no teeth smiles and cooing broken burr from the word go. Boone wanted to warn him. To pull him back down the road and show him the mangled corpses. The little voice in his head questioned why he was still following her. It answered itself, telling him the same reason he followed her out of Novac in the first place, because some little feeling had told him following her would bring an end to it all. Still it irked him to watch. Fitz seemed blind to the blood in her hair and in the cracks of her collar even as she had him pouring water over her head as she rinsed the blood into red wet patches in the dust. 

     Her hair was undone from its normal strange twists in her quest to rid it of blood. There where long wooden stakes in the twists. Fitz was called off the sell to traveling merchants wandering by and she walked to him, her wet hair falling straight around her face.

     "We camp here." He grunted at her as she walked away, out past the fire pit behind the vendors stalls and picked a spot for the weird caterpillar tent of hers. He watched, unable to sake the unease that had settled in his stomach, as she threw rocks into the distance and pulled harsh dry weeds from the ground to clear a place for her tent. He shook his head as it went up, still amazed at how quickly she set it up. It was still mid afternoon. She made a strange stand of sorts for collar with a more sturdy bush and sat crossed legged in front of it, working on the tedious task of removing the blood from the thing. 

     "I not hurting you Boone." He hadn't realized he'd followed her so closely. She was looking up at him. The barrel of his rifle, angled down, was resting against the skin of her lower back. He swung the barrel of his rifle away from her back. It was then, looking down at her as she returned to cleaning her collar that he noticed the angry purple black bruises blooming like twisted cactus flowers on her shoulder, across her stomach, on her leg, sick little flowers.....creeping out from too perfect little circles in their centers......circles that looked like bullet holes. Bullet holes.

    "You got shot."

    "Yes. Is normal in fight." She told him. Like it was the most normal thing in the whole damn desert that she was sitting there in the dust with bruises instead of holes. 

     "I'm going on a walk." He told her, finally shouldering his gun, only to jam his hands in his pants pockets and stomp off. Boone found a rock a good ways off and sat there. He fished a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of his pockets and lit up. He sat there, staring out across the desert, until the stars had found the sky and he had long burned through what was left of that pack of cigarettes, thinking about it all. When he finally moved his legs protested, tingly and stiff, he walked back to where she'd set her tent. She wasn't there. Her collar was right where he'd seen it last, clean now. 

     Drunken laughter had him turning to the campfire ring. Fitz was shirtless and dancing around the ring. Apparently he wasn't the only one that had fallen to her charms because the woman that had been running the other store was sitting right next to her, passing a bottle of something to her. Fitz saw him first. Waving his shirt and giving a whoop.

    "Alright! Come'n join the party!"

     "Boone! Come! Sit!" Boone cursed her cooing burr and the way she said his name. Boone walked around Fitz and sat on the side the other woman wasn't already stuck to. "Whiskey?" She asked, pushing the half filled bottle at him. He let his duffel bag hit the dust and set his gun on top of it before reaching for the bottle. He took a heavy swig, expecting the fire that came with cheap whiskey. He was pleasantly surprised by the smooth warm tingle as the stuff slipped down his throat. He grunted and held the bottle back. Whatever label might have been there was long gone. The next pull he took off the bottle was slower, and he let the flavor wash around in his mouth before he swallowed. Its was actually pleasant and he slightly regretted having to hand the bottle back. The three of them passed the bottle back and forth, watching Fitz make a drunken dancing fool of himself until the last drops where gone from the bottle and the fire had burned down into coals. Boone was far from drunk, but he thought, pleasantly buzzed. The woman had fallen asleep, slumped off her wooden seat, head pressed into the crook of Rain-Walking-Softly's neck. 

     "Fitz. Where Lupe sleep?" He be dammed if alcohol didn't make her bur even thicker. Fitz finally stopped in his drunken dancing. Stumbling away to the shack, leading her in while she carried that Lupe woman like she was no more than a small child. Moments later she appeared again. She walked back over, offering him a hand up from his seat. He stared at her hand. At the dark nails that tipped each finger. The he took it. The strength in the pull didn't startle him as much this time. Her fingers slipped away and she had ducked to collect his bag and gun. She was headed off to her tent before he could protest, so he simply followed her. 

     He hesitated at the flap of her tent, watching her lower and smoothly glide into the low mouth of the thing. She had his duffel bag. And his rifle. Her face appeared in the flap.

     "Grabbing collar please?" He grunted, stepped over and grabbed the collar off the bush, thrusting it at her. She took it from him and disappeared inside the tent again. He felt like an idiot, crawling through the tent flap on his hands and knees, unable to glide in on a crouch like she had. She was sitting on the near edge of an impressive pile of fur. His duffel bag and rifle neatly tucked to the left of the flap, her bags open and nestled to the right. It was cozy in here, but ultimately more spacious than he would have though possible, looking at it from the outside. A little pot hung from the center beam, a lamp of sorts, casting soft flickering light over the tent. She clicked at him, a harsh, disapproving sound, when he started to move a bit further in.

     "No boots Boone." He grumbled, sat back, falling on his ass a bit harder than he'd meant to and pulled off his boots. He stared at his own feet for a moment before shucking off his socks and stuffing them in his right boot. "Come, sit." She patted the furs next to her. He eyed the pile, sighed, and crawled over, cursing at who ever made a tent so short a person couldn't stand in it. He sat and she moved away, into her packs, returning to her spot with four thick books, bound well into all green covers, tied together with rough looking twine. 

     She stared at him then, long and harder than he'd ever seen her look at anything. When she dropped the stare she sighed.

     "This much easy if ya Canumi." The word rolled off her tongue so smoothly, fell so perfectly into her burr that he knew that word had to be one from her native tongue. "Then ya just read I and know." She gestured to herself as she spoke. "My mother Canumi. Her name Weeping-Flower. My father....Enclave." She spat the word like it was venom on her tongue. Something clicked in the back of his head and all at once the symbol that he'd seen on her shoulder that he couldn't place was the Enclave insignia. 

      "My father not my father. My father not sire I. He.......he made I." She drummed her fingers on the top of the tied books she'd brought from her pack. "These, my father left. He write of make I. He want soldier, I thinks. Ya wanna follow I hunting Legion, then ya should read."

     This was not what he was expecting. What had he been expecting? 

     "This'll take me a while to read."

     "Is fine."

     "Anything I should know?"

     "I is very strong. Too much strong. Loud is bad. Hurts much much bad. Some things hurt I nose bad. Bullets do this." She waved at her stomach of nasty bruises.

     "What are you?"

     "I......I not know." The look of pure defeat in her eyes when she told him that was hauntingly familiar.

     He sighed, rubbing his face under his shades. "I can't read this now. It's late and we should both sleep. I'll start in the morning."

     "Sleep here. Is space." She waved her arm towards the space next to her pile of furs.

     There was enough space for his bedroll and then some. The alcohol weighed heavier on his brain. His boots where off. Part of him was uncomfortable, feeling like he was invading her space. His boots where already off. By the time he'd rolled out his bed roll, set down his shades and beret and crawled in, she'd disappeared into the mound of fur and the flickering light was gone. Boone stared at the dark ceiling of the tent, turning what she'd told him over in his head until his whiskey buzz carried him into sleep. 


	10. Her Father

     Somewhere in the dark of the morning Boone begin to move. He writhed and turned in his bedroll, chased by phantoms. He woke shortly after and for a time he simply sat in the dark. She could hear him heartbeat hammering on the inside of his chest and smell his sweat. Her sleepy mind wondered what he dreamed of, but he had shifted, pulled on his boots and was gone from the tent. So she rolled over and went back to sleep. 

     The sun started its climb in the sky, bleeding down its light and with it she woke. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, wincing when she caught the side of her nose with the claw on her thumb. The little scratch faded to nothing before she could run her fingers over it. She stretched, enjoying the crack in her shoulders, before kicking out of her furs. Bitmol in hand she slipped from her mimi. Boone sat by the fire pit, gun across his knees, scowling into one of her fathers journals. The fire was going, had been perhaps, since he first stepped out, because he was most of the way through the journal in his hand. To let him read them.....she hoped it wasn't a mistake. 

     She sighed, kneeling, tossed back her morning dose of bitmol, and put her nose in her knees. She prayed. Prayed to the Holding One for her health, the Chasing One for good hunting, the Crackling One to live through another fight, and she prayed to the Making One, sending her blessing to her mother, and.......this time she prayed for Boone, for his hurting heart to find ease of the death of his amari, even if he called her different, that was what she was.

     Prayers said and bitmol drank, she left Boone to her fathers thoughts. The last of her meat had been their meal the night before last. It was time to go hunting again. Bitmol deposited back in her tent, collar left behind for its clicking and hunting knife strapped to her thigh, she was off. There where bighorners on the wind and she went for them. Down and away from the camp, grazing on dry desert shrubs near a stagnant pool of green black water she found them. A large herd for such a dry place. She watched them from her place, counting calves and their mothers. There, one, two, three females without a calf. She only needed one. It would last a good while, even feeding two people. It was quick, once she picked the one she wanted. She was on the beast and had it down and dead with a snapped neck before the herd even knew she was there. And when the herd smelled her they scattered, as they always did.  

 


	11. Slow Reading

     He was stiff. He'd been sitting here on this wooden block since the early hours of morning, when dreams of Carla's last moments had driven him from sleep. He'd started the fire roaring in the pit again when he'd first come out of the tent, but lost in reading he had let it die. Boone scowled through his shades at the open book in his lap. Reading had.....never been one of his strong suits. It took him longer than most to sort out the words and this was difficult to read, full of words he had never heard before, never needed to know before. He wanted to throw the book out of pure frustration with himself. He wanted to close it and not read anymore because even for the wasteland it was twisted. He wanted to read more. He needed to know.

     Even with his limited understanding of some of the words he felt sick to his stomach. This sick man, one Doctor Anthony Felps, who had written this journal of sorts, in his too neat handwriting........he spoke of breeding animals and humans together to make beasts of war that wore human-like faces, easy to command to violent and deluded goals. His writing made him sound deranged, and his notes of progress in his twisted 'work' where often interrupted by the man raving about how his companions called him fools for his ambitions. There were drawings of things he'd never seen, chains of letters and circles and dashes that made no sense to him, and drawing of all kinds of animals. Flat little toothy creatures called wolverines, yao guai, snakes, even death claws. Several pages held a disturbing set of images detailing the dissection of a super mutant. Further in, the testing starting. Boone didn't know exactly how to make sense of how the man was doing it, but with a set of lab animals, Dr. Felps had begun to splice together all manner of unnatural beasts. The careful notes that where taken about each of them twisted creatures where accompanied with details and gruesome drawings of their sick existence and of their dissection after death. 

     Out of the corner of his eye while he read he saw her leave the tent to pray, then vanish into the desert.

     Some of it was almost too much to read. Failures where more common than successes, if one could truly call them that. Dr. Felps complained of his hybrid animals killing their mothers from the inside, effectively killing themselves. Some simply grew too large for their mothers bodies before birth and ruptured out of them, killing both. Others where the fetus in later stages of growth would simply begin to eat its way out of its mother. Worst where the ones where the modifications made to the fetus began to taint the mothers body, and the carrying animal would rot away from the inside. It all struck a little too close to home for him, when the curve of Carla's stomach and the choice he made pasted itself to the backs of his eyelids whenever he closed them for too long. 

     He had read most of the way through that first book by the time she returned. Boone didn't think he could handle reading anymore of the shit right then. He needed a break from it all. As he stuck a bit of shrub in between pages to hold his place, his hands paused for a moment, and he remembered Rain had told him her 'father' had made her. He wasn't ready to think about THAT yet, so he snapped the book shut, then leaned and tied it back into its bundle, then tucked the whole thing into his duffel bag. 

     She came back with a dead bighorner draped over her shoulders. By the time he'd worked the old stubborn zipper of his duffel shut, she had already set to work. From Fitz she had borrowed some old wooden poles, and with them she had fashioned a three-legged tepee that was sturdy enough that she could hang the whole animal by its hind legs without so much as a wobble. 

     She made fast work of the skinning, leaving the head intact. It was mesmerizing, watching the bone handled knife with a short little blade flick in and out of the thick fat right under the hide. It was a thick one, without any bald spots in it. She tossed the separated hide up over the tops of the tepee, hide side down. 

     "Boone?" Came the cooing bur of hers. He startled a bit when he realized he had been staring again. He grunted. "Ya want helping me?"

     "Yeah......Sure." 

      She looked at him for a moment, then squatted down and began hacking off the head. He stood there watching her awkwardly until she looked up at him with an arch in her brow, as if to ask him why he wasn't squatting with her. So he followed her down into the squat and she pushed the half chopped off head at him. 

     "Holding here." He grabbed a horn and a handful cheek and fur. It was still warm. She went back to her chopping, and he heard crunching little pops as she hacked around the vertebrae and the head got heavy as the bone let go and only the muscle at the back of the neck remained. A few quick swipes freed the head completely and he stood with it. She rose with him and motioned for him to turn it. He must have had a puzzled look on his face because she took the head from him, turned it so that she held a horn in each hand, then offered it back to him. He grunted and took the head back from her.

     "Boone, ya hold until no blood." She shook her little knife at him. "Do na put in dirt."

     He nodded and stepped away from the tepee thing she had built. He felt as though she might have intentionally given him something to do that would get him out of her way. But standing there watching her, getting bighorner blood down the front of his pants and on his boots, he kind of understood why she would want him out of her way. She made butchering up the carcass looked painfully easy. She neatly hacked off both front legs, and one found its way to both Lupe and Fritz. She gutted it and brought out that strange wrapper he'd seen her pull meat out of in Boulder City. She made the butchering look like some kind of art. 

     His eyes wandered from the tight little movements of her working on the carcass and he found himself staring at the backs of her legs. He hadn't really looked to closely at the black markings there. He found he couldn't help but study them. Rings of tally marks ended mid thigh. Strange marking encircled her knees, and her calves where covered in symbols bound in circles that looked a lot like the ones that surrounded the flower and the Enclave insignia that adorned the backs of her shoulders. More markings wrapped around her ankles and trickled down the tops of her feet, stopping shy of her toes. He wondered what it all meant. 

     He lost track of time, staring at the backs of her legs, and the images blurred as he become lost in thought. He was brought back into the present with a snap that sounded right in front of his nose. 

      

 

 


	12. The Chasing One

     She made quick work of breaking down the Bighorner, gifting a front leg to each of their hosts, as was proper, and chopping up the rest to fit neatly into her nochu. It was stretched, thick with good meat, and the sight of it pleased her. Boone was staring through his sunglasses again, and for a while she could feel his gaze on the back of her legs. She looked at him again, satisfied with the bony carcass that hung from her benii, to find him staring into nothing. There were blood drops down the front of his pants, and blood on his boots. 

     "Boone." But he didn't hear her, so she snapped her fingers in front of his nose to get his attention. She could see him blink from behind his sunglasses as he came back to himself. Then he grunted at her. She snorted back at him, amused. Rain was beginning to understand some of his grunts, like how that particular one was the equivalent of him asking 'What?'. She held out her hands for the Bighorner head, and he stared at her hands for a moment, before shoving it at her like he suddenly didn't want it to be near him. 

     "Come. Boone pray. I pray. Much thanks." She starting walking towards the embers in the fire pit, silently cursing her terrible English all over again. Boone didn't follow, and she turned to look at him with question in her eyes. 

     "Pray?"

     "Yes. Pray." He stared at her through his sunglasses for a moment, then sighed.

     "To who?"

     "One-That-Chase. Is goodess.....g-A-dess.....goddess..... is goddess hunting." She turned back to the fire pit. "Come. Ya eatin', Ya pray." Boone grunted at her again, but moved to follow her. He deposited himself where he had been sitting earlier, near his bag. She began to hum, happy that she had convinced him to pray with her. It was important to thank the animals for giving their lives. She placed the Bighorner head carefully into the fire pit, twisting the thick severed neck down into the embers until it was planted firmly upright. She collected bit of brush and the some old panishu wood that was being used for making fires and carefully arranged it around the head, before leaning down to blow breath back into the fire again. The fire leapt and she nodded, pleased.

      "Boone." She patted the dust beside her. "Come sit." He eyed her for a moment, then got up and came to plunk down beside her. She rearranged her legs, kneeling, tucking her legs together, and sitting back on her heels. She clicked her tongue at Boone, then motioned to her legs. It was amusing watching him maneuver himself into a similar kneeling position. His legs where bulkier than hers, and he was clearly nowhere near as flexible. But it was close enough. He was nanin after all. She leaned forward, stretching her arms out in front of her, tucking her face into her knees. She could hear Boone huff in frustration as he tried to copy her. He was trying, and that was enough for her.

     Every Canumi knew the prayer thank honor the beast that had given its life, to pay respects to The Chasing One, but Boone did not. So silently she sent her own prayers, whole and proper up to The Chasing One, and out to the spirit of her hunt. But for Boone, out loud, she did her best with her broken English.

     "Big mother, One-That-Chase, hunt sky, look, honor hunt. Honor hunter. Honor them eatin'." She breathed deeply. "Spirit fly. Spirit free this place. Thank much spirit, give us meat for eat. Thank much." It did the prayer little justice. It didn't matter. Now to wait. She stayed, folded as one should, with her hands stretched before her towards the fire until it had burned away the fur and the skin of the Bighorner head in the fire pit. Boone shifted around, not used to the bend, the prayer, the act in itself, but he stayed, bend awkwardly until she sat up. 

     She turned to watch him as he rolled his shoulders, then reached to rub absently at his left shoulder as he stared back at her through his sunglasses. She chuffed at him in amusement. 

     "Ya not pray too much Boone." She teased. His hand paused in soothing his shoulder, and the silence stretched for a moment too long.

     "No."

     "Ya have gods?"

     "No."

     She had expected this answer. There where so many nanin that had no gods. Nanin that didn't believe. Grass-Moving-Slow had told her once, about how the nanin were broken in their spirits, because they did not believe. She huffed. Boone's face twitched. She did not want to think about this anymore. So she rose to her feet and gave the burning head a deep bow, in a last pay of respect. She needed to work the hide. As she stepped back, Boone creaked up onto his feet, wincing as he rose. He bowed too stiffly at the head and looked at her again.

     "Is it done?" She nodded, and retreated back to her benii, where the hide waited. 


	13. Fine With Her

     Boone's thighs burned and his shoulders felt stiffer than they had in a long time. He had no idea how long they had been there, but it had been long enough for him to feel uncomfortable. Towards the end of it he hadn't been able to keep himself from shifting around slightly to try and ease his discomfort.  He didn't know how to feel about the praying. The praying to some tribal god with all the experiments still swimming around in his head. He moved over and dropped back down to sit on the wooden block. His fingers picked at the dried blood flecks, riddled with dust from kneeling, on his pant legs as he drifted in his thoughts. 

     She prayed. She prayed a lot. She had prayed every morning and every evening that he had known her. She didn't shy away from his staring, in fact she seemed to think it was amusing. She was tribal, painfully tribal, with her broken English and the way she cooed his name. She was........something strange. No, she was a monster. A monster that tore open men like a deathclaw. A monster with cactus flower bruises instead of bullet holes. A monster with a monster of a 'father'. A monster that ............... prayed. His eyes snapped from their blank staring over to where she sat cross legged in front of her tepee thing, working over the bighorner hide with her little bone handled knife, scraping the fat away from it. 

     Boone didn't know exactly what made him decide that he was okay with it, okay with her, that he was going to keep following her, but he decided then, that he would. He blew out a heavy sigh, glancing down at the work his fingers had done while he'd thought. Around his feet, the gritty little flecks of red were spread. He'd have to polish the blood off his boots. He looked at his duffel, knowing he didn't have so much as a rag to work over his boots stuffed in it. He unzipped the stubborn old zipper and was greeted with the journals, nestled on top. 

     He hesitated, wondering if he had it in him to crack the thing back open again. Then reached for the bundle, and slipped the first one free of the twine, fingers finding the brush he'd placed before and cracking it back open, eyes skimming down the page until he'd found where he'd left off reading last. 

     The sick experiments continued, the tones of the good doctor growing happier as he honed his splicing. Twisted new creatures that where nothing like either of the parents that they had been made from. The pages with the drawings, ever graphic, showing stunted deathclaws with mirelurk pincers, scaly yao guai cubs with stinging radscorpion tails and terrible fused mouths, and warped baby radstags with too many teeth and too many eyes, where perhaps the worst. Even through drawings, the spliced creatures seemed to bemoan their misery to him. The doctor was delighted, hashing and rehashing new names for his new creatures, and raving his disapproval for his scientific colleagues lack of respect for his accomplishments. The journal ended in frustrated technical jargon that spoke to new experiments of mashing together the spliced nightmares that had already been made. 

     Boone closed the back cover of the journal and stared down into the green of it, rolling rotting mothers and twisted creatures around in his head. He thought he understood. Part of him hoped he didn't. If these journals progressed as he feared they might........he looked up again, found Rain standing over a frame of wood and thick brush as she worked to stretch the hide over it, he was..........afraid of what......what had happened to her mother. He looked away from her, as though the act of doing so would chase the mental image of some faceless olive skinned woman rotting from the inside out from his mind eye.

     He became aware then, of the way the sun was burning hot at the back of his neck, a new stiffness blooming in his shoulders, and of how hungry he was. His stomach voiced its emptiness. When had he last eaten? 

     "Boone." That cooing bur. He grunted. "Ya want eat?" He stared at her a moment, before nodding. She left the hide, carefully stretched over all but one corner of the frame, and stepped it the skeletal carcass that still hung from the tepee. A disturbingly quick serious of twists and cracks saw the big bones of the hind legs tucked under and arm as she walked to the fire pit. He watched as she carefully removed the charred skull from the ashes of the fire and laid the bones down into the ring. Up went a tent of wood pieces and with the scraps of some old poster for tinder over the top of them. Out came her flint and the little striking knife, and she leaned close to her work as she breathed life into the flames. Once it burned steady, she moved away, back to her worm tent. 

     He watched as she returned, with the stakes for roasting and her pouch of spices, and set to work spicing and spearing the fresh bighorner meat. He could smell the bones starting to burn under the delicious smell of the roasting meat. His mouth was watering and twice more his stomach announced its hunger, by the time she was handing him steaming chunks of meat with the tip of her knife. He tossed the hot chunks between his fingers until it was cool enough to eat before popping them into his mouth. She was good at cooking, and he thought, he was glad she didn't want him to eat the canned food that he had brought with him. Between bites of her own, she wiggled the leg bones out of the fire and let the charred bones steam before cracking them apart with the handle of her knife. The cooked marrow that was exposed smelled divine. Again she offered him pieces off the tip of her knife.

For a stolen moment, in the burning sun of the early desert afternoon, mouth full of good food, Boone couldn't hear that little voice that murmured to him that he didn't deserve anything good, defiantly not food that tasted this good.

     


	14. Chapter 14

     Rain stretched up from her crouch, stomach pleasantly full. Boone hadn't smiled, but with the meal, she thought perhaps his spirits has lifted some. She walked over to the hide, not yet completely stretched over its frame, and retrieved her water bladder. She took a deep drink from it. Sucking in air as she wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand, she returned to the fire and offered it to Boone. He stared at her hand outstretched with the offering of water, then took it and took a few gulps, fumbling a bit at first with drinking from the bladder, before he handed it back. The fire was too hot to linger near in the afternoon sun, so she took she roasting sticks away from it to wash them, before returning both the bladder and the skewers to her mimi. 

     She slipped back out and took in the scene before her. Back near the road, Fitz and Lupe stood in the shade of their stalls, waiting for some trader or gambler to pass by. The legless skeletal carcass of the bighorner hung from her benii still and the hide sat, almost mocking her in its state of incompleteness. Boone sat on the wooden block near the fire still, slouching in the heat. She looked back at her mimi, which spoke to her of shade and a nap that her full stomach agreed with. But to sleep alone....could Boone be convinced back to his sleeping bag, where it still rested next to her furs?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I accidentally posted before it was finished. Ignore this thing until it has a proper title.


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